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i mean, the ancient religions are basically codified systems of 'be nice' morals and collective/community-based ethics that, applied correctly, can enable people to coexist peacefully with their neighbours and to give a structure and ritual to their everyday lived lives. irrational, certainly; but much in a complicated life that is valuable is (those hyper-rational societies planned according to the iron laws of Reason and History sure worked out well, didn't they boris?). centuries of philosophers and theologians studied a body of extant knowledge, shaped it, refined it, reasoned their ways through it. from it, we have much of the structure of our scholastic learning, our logic, and our metaphysics. aristotle, aquinas, augustine, ambrose, jerome, boethius, avicenna, averroes ... fichte, kierkegaard, nietzsche.

scientology was a franchise spinoff by one of the most prolific pulp sci-fi writers of all time, who literally announced halfway through his shoddy hack career that 'the real money is in religion' (i.e. tax exemption). it combined 1950s self-help manuals, upper east-side talking therapies, and a space opera. in all the thousands of pages of psychobabble and waffle, he didn't attain the clarity or insight of a single line from augustine's 'confessions'.

... but, yeah, they are basically the same thing. though i have no disagreement with you that religions can become "insane and horrible" forces.

uziq wrote:

i mean, the ancient religions are basically codified systems of 'be nice' morals and collective/community-based ethics that, applied correctly, can enable people to coexist peacefully with their neighbours and to give a structure and ritual to their everyday lived lives.

religions are nothing like that^. religions, all of them, are tools for establishing control, and nothing else. they can, by design, be used for anything - that's the problem.

Shahter wrote:

uziq wrote:

i mean, the ancient religions are basically codified systems of 'be nice' morals and collective/community-based ethics that, applied correctly, can enable people to coexist peacefully with their neighbours and to give a structure and ritual to their everyday lived lives.

religions are nothing like that^. religions, all of them, are tools for establishing control, and nothing else. they can, by design, be used for anything - that's the problem.

No, uzi is right, they are shared history and were built and refined as a way to share moral insights in the form of parables. The Bible is nothing more than written oral stories that were passed down as collective wisdom for centuries before someone finally put them down on paper. The same can be said for stuff like The Iliad and The Odyssey or any of the Norse myths.

The problems arise from when they were committed to paper because they lost their ability to evolve. Instead they became codified and worshipped as divine wisdom when in reality this was just a random endpoint.

Yes, religion can and has been abused but it wasn't created specifically to control or oppress anyone. It was meant as guidance.

"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough." -Frederick Bastiat

Jay wrote:

Shahter wrote:

uziq wrote:

i mean, the ancient religions are basically codified systems of 'be nice' morals and collective/community-based ethics that, applied correctly, can enable people to coexist peacefully with their neighbours and to give a structure and ritual to their everyday lived lives.

religions are nothing like that^. religions, all of them, are tools for establishing control, and nothing else. they can, by design, be used for anything - that's the problem.

No, uzi is right

no, he is not. bullshit designed to fool people remains bullshit, regardless of how many moral values and shared history gets incorporated into it over years of practice. a logical system that has at its core a set of axioms some of which are false can be used to prove absolutely anything.

i've never seen a good augustine translation, but i've read a lot of tolstoy's stuff (which was fascinating and thought provoking indeed), still, no matter how many great artists find some form of inspiration in it, organized religion remains a control tool. i'm sure if scientology lasts as long as did christianity it will have its own shebang of augustines, tolstoys and the likes.

in russia the orthodox church has always been a handmaiden to the autocratic state/ruler so it makes sense he has such an edgelord-skeptic view of religion. the church there indeed has helped to keep a giant population stupid and obeisant because of political reasons — vast territories with little possibility of military control, a huge imbalance in power and wealth, etc.

Identity politics is boring. I read an online advice column by Slate. The old lady who ran it was very interesting and straight. She kept the whole thing diverse and interesting.

The new lady is a lesbian who decided she wanted to become a man one day. Now every other story is about bisexual, lesbian, gay or tranny problems. And even if the stories were repetitive it would be cool if the answers weren't too. Every suggestion of course fits in with the accepted PC narrative unfortunately. And it's all very boring.

That's the biggest issue with identity politics. It's all boring after awhile. I don't want to hear about LGBT shit all the time.

uh-huh. reminds me of an anecdote:a man to his idiot wife who has got another bottle of snake oil sold to her:- dear, you are so easy to take advantage of! come on, what's the probability that you meet a live bear walking in the streets today?- 50/50.- what?!?- i either meet one, or i don't.

Teaching history to black kids is tedious. I have noticed that black kids just outright reject information, history, or culture that isn't black in a way that kids of other races don't. They also have little difference in taste or interest. They are all interested in rap music, basketball, and dress the same.

When you look at the differences between black boys and girls, you will see that the girls work harder and are a lot less aggressive. Black men are overly aggressive and rather impress each other than authority figures who actually matter.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Teaching history to black kids is tedious. I have noticed that black kids just outright reject information, history, or culture that isn't black in a way that kids of other races don't. They also have little difference in taste or interest. They are all interested in rap music, basketball, and dress the same.

When you look at the differences between black boys and girls, you will see that the girls work harder and are a lot less aggressive. Black men are overly aggressive and rather impress each other than authority figures who actually matter.

On one hand, teachers should receive basic respect from their students as authority figures. On the other, much of what you say here bleeds what respect I think you actually deserve. And whining about it isn't painting a prettier picture.

Anyway, I haven't found this to be especially the case with my black classmates from years past. Whites and Hispanics slacked and goofed off in similar numbers, and there were girls who just couldn't be bothered with any of the material.

I can tell you for a fact that black male students are uniquely difficult to deal with and get to focus. The mulatto students are easy to deal with despite having the same taste in things. I think there is just something wrong with the black male demographic that causes their suffering more so than anything else.

i feel like it's the 1980s again with all this discussion of absent black father figures and the disintegration of the black middle-class nuclear family. like ... no shit? do you think this is a uniquely racial thing? i suppose it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that the industrial-base upon which the black population traditionally depended and relocated/went north for has disappeared, leaving no stable employment and poverty in its wake?

suppose it can’t have been anything to do with three centuries of colonialism, slavery, wealth extraction, government corruption, multinational corporations, neo-colonial bureaucratic and educational structures ... no, the black man is simply subhuman. couldn’t cut it!

and yes macbeth you’re probably right in that other role models of dubious pedigree (rappers, gangsters, etc) have filled the vacuum in their declining communities. you’re probably right also that similar groups on the socioeconomic ladder like muslims or costa ricans have a strong religious tradition to rely upon. there are a lot of factors at work here but the colour of someone’s skin isn’t it.

I resent that I can't voice conservative views about criminal justice on the internet without a bunch of black people complaining about how the system is racist and destroying their communities. I really don't wait to have to listen to them complain about this fake news. If you are black and disagree with me on this subject, I will just ignore you.

the system is racist. rates of incarceration make it patently clear. certain laws disproportionately punish the black community. compare sentencing for crack cocaine related offences to sentences for powder cocaine. same drug, very different treatment in the eyes of the law. no surprises that the drug’s consumption is almost a perfect sociological boundary between rich whites and poor blacks.

the three-strikes laws in new york, for instance, are way too harsh. going to jail for 10 years because you got caught with weed twice and then snatched a DUI or something is retarded. hopefully i’m wrong about that topic.

the US sends more of its population to prison than any other advanced first-world country, by some margin. how you can look at the numbers of people in prison, and look at the racial make-up of said populations, and say the law isn’t harsh enough, is hilarious.

Doing a special lesson on 9/11. I noticed a lot of the black kids just don't care while the white kids are totally interested and invested. Why aren't black people more patriotic? I have always noticed that black people don't care about any history that doesn't have black people. Conversely white kids are interested in American history especially the good times and things we did. I think the white kids are kind of taught not to have an ethnic identity and take "American" as theirs. So I can now understand why many attacks on American history from non-white people can be so personally offensive for whites.